


Come and Gone

by quicksparrows



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: But also some Healthy Relationships, F/M, M/M, Multi, Unhealthy Relationships, there's lots of different stuff in here haha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 11,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9080245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: A collection of drabbles and short stories around Jack Morrison, Gabriel Reyes and Angela Ziegler's relationships, largely pre-collapse. Sometimes sexy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sad.





	1. Demarcation Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all get no break from me. AO3 continues to unburden me of my perpetual backlog, and yet it never truly catches up.
> 
> All of these (eventual) stories are connected by my take on their characterizations and a loose idea of their relationships, but there is no deliberate continuity or timeline between them. Feel free to fill in the gaps as it pleases you. :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first one started as a very very early draft of a scene that got completely rewritten from the ground up into Warning Signs. I gave it another shot, re-writing it closer to what the original intent was.

.

 

 

Angela's apartment is supposed to be modern minimalism, Gabriel figures, but even by Swiss standards, the place is barren. 

It wasn't always like this. When Overwatch was a new initiative, when everything was bright and new, visits to her apartment had felt like a little slice of home –– she was one of the relatively few agents who could live at home sometimes instead of boarding in the Headquarters, after all. They used to have American Thanksgivings there, as well as Easters and that month-long conglomeration of winter events they dubbed _Decembermas_. Angela's apartment had always been full of people and warmth.

Gabriel could say that it was all tarnished when the investigations started, but that would be a lie. It's been this way for a while longer. The people changed before the politics did.

"I spend too much time in the lab," she admits, without him even asking. 

"I can't say my place is much better," Gabriel says. It's partially true: he doesn't really have a place, given how much he travels with Blackwatch, but he's never made any particular effort to decorate his room at HQ. Why bother? He jokes: "That's for housekeeping is for, isn't it?"

"Hmm," she hums. There's something there left unsaid, but Gabriel isn't in the mood to invoke criticism by needling her for it.

Her communicator beeps. She pulls it from her pocket and looks at the screen. Gabriel watches her lips purse for just an instant, a little roll of her lips between her teeth. She puts it away again.

"Sorry," she says, catching his eye. "We promised no communicators tonight."

"I don't mind," he says.

"It can wait," she says, but the phone rings again.

Gabriel gives her a look. _Get on with it._

"Are you sure?" she asks.

He sighs at her, a little more vehemently than necessary. She answers it this time, cradling the phone to her face. 

"Hello, darling," she says. _Darling?_ "I can't talk much, I have company over—Oh, you're boarding now, yes."

Gabriel feels tense.

She smiles suddenly, but the corners of her eyes don't crinkle, and her lips are tight. Her voice brightens anyway: "Well, I will pick you up at the airport tomorrow. Bright and early!"

A pause.

"Well, you'll just have to sleep once you get here."

She laughs silently and meets Gabriel's eyes.

"I'd love to talk but I'm with an old friend for dinner and drinks. If I don't get back to that, I'll be a poor host," she says. "Mmm. I'll see you in the morning, then. See you soon."

_Darling._

She ends the call and sets the communicator down on the counter. Gabriel looks at the screen just as it blackens. There's a beat of silence between them, strange and curious.

"Are you _dating_ someone these days?" Gabriel asks. He hopes it comes out a little playful, even if he doesn't feel that way at all, but he's not sure it does.

"Don't I wish," she says, amused, but she raises her eyebrows at him.

He supposes it was a stupid question. He's not sure if Angela would still invite him over if she decided to settle down with someone serious; they aren't _that_ close these days. Would she put up with this tension and the whole song and dance of drinking nice drinks and eating nice meals if she wasn't going to get laid out of it?

He's not sure anymore. He usually wouldn't have cared, but these days everything in Overwatch is being divided across imaginary demarcation lines –– _people_ included. He can't just knock on Angela's door or send her a dirty message or breathe orders down her ear and instantly coax her away anymore. Other people want her attention, too –– not that they didn't before, but competition is now complicated.

He doesn't want to think about who else she might be casually fucking.

She fetches two wine glasses from the cabinets. She sets them down with a clink, and then, after a moment of rummaging around for a corkscrew, she just hands the whole bottle to him. He pries it out with his fingers, and she watches him do it. She's seen this tired old trick a thousand times over the years.

"Always so handy," she says, regardless.

"Millions of research dollars to open bottles," he replies.

It's an old joke. It used to be funnier.

Her communicator vibrates. She glances at it but she leaves it alone to take the bottle back from him and pour them a few glasses.

"Any other plans for the weekend?" he asks.

"Not really," she says. "I'm hoping it'll be quiet. We could all use that right now, I think."

A weekend. It takes him a second to remember she has those now, after years of constant travel and warfare –– her department is the first one suspended by the UN, now that the investigations have started in earnest. He'd been in Lagos when she'd sent him the news about it, and then cried to him a little in a call. He'd felt a little good about Overwatch getting taken down a peg then, and he still does now if he's being honest, but it won't last. Blackwatch's operations are likely going to be suspended next, and then he won't be laughing anymore.

"Just sit at home and read?" he asks.

She shrugs.

"Maybe I'll go see a movie," she says. "Or go shopping. It's been a while since I've done anything like that, either. Give my poor assistant a break! I run that girl ragged without even being here most of the time, I'm sure."

Does she? He doesn't know, so despite the candor in her voice he doesn't laugh. Angela takes a sip of her wine and averts her eyes for a second, maybe under the guise of wondering if she heard the deliveryman at the door with their dinner. Conversation dead, again.

Whatever.

"Hey," he rumbles.

Gabriel reaches out with a hand and beckons her to come closer. Angela looks at him plainly and sighs, wine glass still balanced in her hand. He beckons again and she obliges, right over to his bar chair, and when she gets in arm's reach he hooks an arm around her hips and pulls her right between his open thighs. She goes easy, gamely, and she settles in his arms with her nose inches from his.

"What do we _really_ have to talk about?" he murmurs.

Fucking nothing, that's what. He's sick of hearing about Overwatch, or the impending lack of Overwatch, or how Overwatch is simultaneously too much and not enough for any of them. 

_Fuck Overwatch._

She sighs, relenting, and she leans into his lap, as if she might sit on his knee, but one foot stays firmly on the ground. He gets a hand to the back of her head and he takes her into a crushing kiss, one that has their noses nudging here or there and her mouth open to him. When she inhales sharply through her nose, she arches her back a little, relishes him squeezing her. The wine tastes good. Her sweater rumples under his fingers; she's not wearing a bra, and her back is long and smooth, her breasts high and firm. Her flesh is yielding under his fingers. She breaks off the kiss just to engage him again, but sweeter, kinder.

He used to like that, but he's not in the mood for it now.

He gets a hand under her thigh and boosts her into his lap. She swings her arm around his neck to balance herself, her wine careening wildly in the other hand, and she makes a little worrying noise against his lips. 

"Gabriel," she murmurs, almost against him. "After dinner."

"Why wait?"

He shifts her in his lap to center her, to pull her up against his groin, but her knee is in the way. She doesn't resist, but she doesn't make it easy, not with her trying to keep a foot on the floor and wine in hand. _Why?_ he wants to repeat, frustrated. _Just–_

"The deliveryman is going to be here any minute now," she says. "Then we can do all the dirty things we want, without being interrupted."

A year ago, he might have been game for this, spending drinks flirting and dinner teasing each other. He could spend an hour watching her drink, lips around a beer bottle, and he could toe her under the table, pushing a knee between hers. By time they finished dinner, he'd be rock-hard and fit to burst with anticipation, and he could push her up against a wall and she'd be so wet he could just slide in without any preamble.

Now? Fuck that. It's all _bullshit_ these days.

Her communicator buzzes again. Neither look but Gabriel feels that buzz like a drill right into his skull, into his heart. He reaches for her face and he cups it, and it wasn't meant to be tender but she looks soft, as if it were anyway.

"So let's get interrupted," he says, trying to be coaxing. She stares at him. "I'll answer the door with my cock out. It'll be funny."

Her expression says it wouldn't be funny at all, but she doesn't say anything. She moves to slide out of his lap but he doesn't want her to, so he keeps an arm around her waist and tugs her in. She tries anyway. 

"Gabriel," she says. " _After._ "

She sets down her wine glass to pull away proper, but he doesn't let go when he expects her to, and the wine glass skitters and tips across the marble countertop. Both turn their heads sharply to watch it crash over, a great splatter of red wine streaked across the kitchen.

"Oh," she gasps. She slides from his lap like nothing, and she reaches for a dish towel, but there's none to be found, even after she rummages through a few drawers. 

"Ah, wait! They were in the wash," she says, lightly. She rushes off to the hall.

He hears her opening doors, out of his sight. With a tent in his pants and a tension in his neck that makes his head hurt, Gabriel fumes. Why the fuck did he agree to dinner and drinks, anyway? Why did he think they could pretend the world isn't crumbling around them? _Who the fuck ruined his night?_

Gabriel looks at her communicator on the counter, and without any deliberation at all picks it up and triggers the screen with his thumb. 

It lights up on a notification:

  

> **Jack   7:34 pm**
> 
> Is this old friend anyone I know?

 

Gabriel sets the phone down again, just a little harder than necessary, but in his heart he's ready to hurl it at the wall.

"Found it!"

Angela returns with a dish rag in hand, and she rushes right to the spill and lays it out. He just watches her and _loathes_ her geniality; so _this_ is what's happening? She's feeding him dinner in her home and planning her visit tomorrow with Morrison. He's drinking from the same bottle Morrison will probably drink from. 

He's going to fuck her in her bed and she's still going to have his sweat on her when she sees fucking _Jack Morrison_ and that smug, glory-thieving, shit-brained bastard will have a better night than he did.

"Don't look so put off," she says, glancing up. He should help but he doesn't move. She laughs at his expression: "It's just wine, Gabriel!"

"Fuck this," he says, curtly, and the smile vanishes from her face instantly.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

But she knows what's wrong. She _knows_ she's dallied too close to the demarcation line, played with fire by allowing them too close. For over a year, entire countries have had their wars, crises and sufferings expedited or delayed for the sake of keeping Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes from being at Headquarters at the same time, and she would fuck with that by inviting them both so close.

Fuck her armistice, fuck the Swiss, and most of all, fuck her neutrality. It's bullshit.

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" he says, bitter. _Mean._

Her eyes drift to the phone. She closes her eyes for a moment, hand still holding the sopping cloth to the spill, and then she pushes it across the counter and into the sink. It hits the bottom with a wet smack, and she leans a hip against the counter's edge.

"Gabriel," she says, finally, sighing. "Can't you just––"

" _Don't_ ," he replies, and he gets to his feet. The back of the bar chair dings off the edge of the marble countertop. "Just spare me the bullshit. Did you invite him here so he'd run into me? Is this another one your stupid interventions?"

"He's on a six hour flight, he won't be here until after you've left," Angela says, but she drops her voice a little. "Can't this evening just be nice _as it is_? Why does it always have to be about Jack?"

" _You_ made it about him with your fucking communicator."

"That's unfair," she shoots back. "I told you I didn't need to answer it, and I changed my plans with Jack in the first place so I would have time for _you_ on your _only_ night available this week. Was I supposed to not spend time with you because he'd arrive the _next day_?"

"Does he know I'll have been here?"

" _Yes,_ " she says, exasperated.

"Bullshit!" he snaps. He's pacing now, rounding the island with long, tense strides. She waits for him on the other side, both hands on the counter edge, and she doesn't budge even when he presses himself into her space. She looks up his chest and her eyes settle on his.

"Gabriel," she repeats, this time _warning._

"Don't _Gabriel_ me," Gabriel says. He lifts a hand and points off, deeper into the apartment. "Bedroom, now. So I can get out of here."

Angela lifts her chin. There's a defiance to her mouth when she does it, a point of her nose in the air. Her fingers curl around the counter's edge like she could root herself there.

"If this is how you're going to treat me, then you can get out _now_ ," she says, sharper.

Gabriel stays where he is. In fact, he presses in a little closer, pinning her hips between him and the counter. He watches the shift in her jaw, the way she grits her teeth a little, but she looks up at him with resolve.

"Fine," he says. "Have fun with Jack."

And then he pulls away. 

He sweeps the other glass and the wine bottle off the counter with his arm as he crosses the kitchen, smashing them on the floor, and he keeps going without looking back to see her reaction. He hears her make a noise of protest, and the skitter of her feet as she tries to avoid stepping on glass, but he reaches her front door and pulls on his boots before she catches up. He doesn't bother putting on his coat, instead tossing it over an arm and letting himself out.

"Gabriel!" she calls after him, angry, but he slams the door behind him before she gets there.

Fuck her. Fuck Overwatch. And, most of all, fuck Jack Morrison.


	2. Stitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medical content below.

.

 

 

It's been a while since he was stitched up the old fashioned way.

Jack's sat up on the makeshift sterile zone — actually nothing more than a flat stone ledge with a surgical tarp thrown over it. Angela is behind him. He can imagine her tongue poking out in consternation as she works. She hates the old-fashioned far more than he does. 

"I think this one was well-deserved," he croons at her.

"It was reckless," she tells him, but it's fond. She's _very_ fond. "You're our Commander, you shouldn't throw yourself in danger like that."

"By a medic's measures, my whole life is reckless," he says. He feels every stitch, the initial prick, the odd unchanging hum of pain as it glides through his flesh and resurfaces. Angela does it quick, with a sharp needle; Jack can appreciate a sharp needle.

She makes a chiding noise and tugs the thread taut.

"You'll regret it when it leaves another scar," she says. "Mar all this nice skin of yours."

"I _never_ regret scars," he says, sure as ever. "Nor should anyone. They look _good._ "

She jokes: "Would you prefer it if I'd left it loose, so it'll be nice and fat?"

"Go right ahead," he says. 

He glances back at her. She's exasperated, but they're such old friends that he'd be worried if she _wasn't_ playing off him that way. The corners of her mouth twitch.

"Don't complain to me later," she says, and she uses her forceps to force a little space between the stitches. He grimaces a little at first, teeth grit, but he grins.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he says.

She ties the thread off and snips it, and he gets another one for his collection.


	3. Operation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana, Angela, Gabe and Jack pick up a children's board game.

.

 

 

One of Jack's odder quirks is that he likes novelty. It is often good fun at parties like tonight, when he presents them with a board game and two bottles; one of rum, one of tequila.

"Maybe this is more your speed," Jack says, holding up the game box.

It's called _Operation._

"Oh," Angela says. "This one looks like something I might be good at."

Jack laughs, probably because she's lost a horrific number of card games over the past few weeks. Overwatch has a shocking amount of gambling going on, particularly between missions. Angela is well out of her depth on that front, but she's having a wonderful time nonetheless. 

If it wasn't still a military operation at its heart, she would have considered joining earlier.

"Do you recognize it?" he asks.

"I _don't_ , actually," Angela says, amused.

"Well, it's pretty old," he says. "My grandparents had this set at their house when I was growing up, and I played it every time I visited, so I kept it."

"And you wasted space in your luggage bringing it to Switzerland," Gabriel interjects from the kitchenette. He's dumping bags of chips into serving bowls rather unceremoniously; he's sour that they're not playing poker, as they usually would. He furrows his brows. "I _hate_ this game."

"You hate it because you're shit at it," Jack says.

Gabriel is shaking his head already. Angela gets the impression he's been dragged through more than one bad round of it in his life, but he sits down on the couch first, a beer in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other. Ana comes from the kitchen with the other bowls and sits next to him. She surveys the board Jack has put on the coffee table with a measure of suspicion. Her eyes drift to the bottles of liquor tucked under his arm, and the little assortment of novelty shot glasses he's already got on the table. They're all from different countries; a lot of the Headquarters and Watchpoints are furnished and supplied this way, the souvenirs of a hundred different people living in and out of Overwatch's quarters.

"Oh," Ana says. "I remember this one."

"You should; you've played with us before," Jack chides her. 

Jack elects to just sit on the floor; the carpeting is nice enough and the coffee table is low enough that a hulking man like him still gets a fair vantage point. Not Angela, though; she drags over a foot rest to sit on, next to Jack and across from the other two. The board sits in a raised plastic frame, and it has the well-worn image of a portly nude man with no genitals spread out on a yellow background; he has a large red bulb for a nose. His body is marred with little plastic pockets, each lined with a metal frame. There's a pair of tiny tweezers attached, too.

She looks at Gabriel's massive hand, which is fisted around the neck of his beer bottle. She can imagine why he's not very good at it.

"I haven't played it in years," Ana says. "You haven't pulled out this stupid thing since the war. I think Torbjörn threw up on it mid-way through a round, last time."

"Stupid? I'm heartbroken," Jack says. He places a hand over his heart, but he brushes it off.

Angela is a little more concerned about the vomiting part.

"How thoroughly was this cleaned?" Angela asks.

"It's fine," Jack says.

_It's really not,_ says Gabe, just with the look in his eyes.

"Can we sanitize it first?" Angela asks. "Just in case? I have some spray somewhere."

She reaches for her purse to rummage.

"The poor thing is damaged enough without spritzing it down with sanitizer," Jack says, dismissively. He has his eyes on the board, meticulously putting the tiny plastic shapes in their respective slots. "The point is to get these pieces out _without_ touching the board, anyway."

Angela makes eye contact with Gabe again. He subtly shakes his head, slow and deliberate. At least she tried. She picks up the box to read the rules, but Gabe reaches out and puts a hand on the top, pushing it down.

"Don't even bother," he says. "Here: you draw a card for what piece you have to pull out, and then you use little fuckin' tweezers to take the plastic bits out of the holes. If you fuck up, it's going to light up and make noise –– see?"

He picks up the tweezers and rams them into the metal siding of a pocket. All four of them sit a little straighter when the cartoon man's nose lights up with a violent buzzer sound. Ana cringes.

"Just like real surgery," Jack says.

"No!" Angela laughs behind her hand. "What if you get it out?"

"You're supposed to get fake money, but because we're not children, you force everyone else to take shots," Gabe says. "So if you get a piece worth five hundred bucks, and you fuck it up, you're drinking five shots. If you get it, you get to distribute five shots amongst us."

"It's dangerous," Ana says. "Thank god we generally play with people who can hold their liquor."

Ana pauses and sizes Angela up. They've only had casual drinks together, and yet Angela has no doubt that she would be solidly drank under the table by a woman who is both a sniper and a mother of one.

"Are you going to be alright?" Ana asks. "Start drinking shots of water if you're feeling worried. Don't try to keep up with these two, you're such a skinny little thing."

"Are you kidding?" Gabe says. "She's going to win without taking a single drink because she's a fucking surgeon. She's going to win every single card."

"Gabe," Jack snorts, "she's not going to win _just_ because she's a _surgeon_. She's going to win because you and I have _giant hands_."

Ana gives Angela a conspiring look.

"That's how I won, back in the day," she says. "These two, Reinhardt, Torbjörn –– despite how competitive they are, they might as well be oversized toddlers, for all the grace they have. And I? I just like a good drink."

Angela just laughs.

And then she gets them all  _very_ soundly drunk.

 

 


	4. A Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 100 words even!

.

 

Angela laughs, shrieking, flailing –– her fingers grapple against him, to push him off. 

"Don't you dare!"

He looms over her anyway. She does love it.

"You packed a turtleneck, right?" he says coyly, as he tilts her head back to expose her pale throat. He presses the length of his body against hers. The sounds of the bar are muffled behind the door.

"Yes!" she laughs, and his beard is a pleasant little scratch on her skin, the tug and suck of his lips hard on her throat. There's a little chuckle on his breath, unperturbed.

He leaves his mark.


	5. The Ruins

.

 

 

In a number of ways, nothing has changed since the Headquarters burst, leveled by not only explosives but their regrettable, damnable hubris. 

There is no nostalgia in Soldier: 76 now, however –– no desire to see these halls rise from the rubble, restored to their former glory. The ruins are what they are, a grave at which he doesn't think he can mourn. He came here to find a resolution, far from civilians and prying eyes and interruptions, and then, if he's still breathing by the end of it, he'll build something new.

If Overwatch returns under younger, more idealistic former agents like Winston and Tracer, then so be it. He'll let it slip through his fingers. He's not in the business of digging up graves, just putting people in them. Back in them, if necessary.

He looks at Mercy. She's looking above them, at the skeleton of the building that still stands. It's almost dusk and she's just beginning to glow. She turns her head suddenly to look at him and a bracing look passes over her face. 

"It's good be by your side in this, Commander," she says.

"I'm glad to have you," he says. 

That, at least, he feels optimistic about.


	6. Doctor

.

 

 

It's strange to feel so disarmed.

How many times has he stood in his skivvies or less in front of medical professionals? Too many to count, surely. Jack's cumulative time spent being prodded by doctors and scientists and nurses would be better measured in hours, amounting to days, maybe even a week or two. 

All of that seems quaint compared to being almost nude in front of Dr Angela Ziegler. She looks down his sizable chest and swollen biceps and clean, efficient musculature and doesn't favour notes on a clipboard for even a second. In fact, she doesn't even blink.

She hasn't even touched him yet, and for the first time in a long, long time, he feels _nervous_.

"Thank you for this, by the way," she says. They're eye-level for once, if only because he's sitting on an examination bed. Jack is hardly looking at her eyes, though; his gaze ends up on the bow of her lips. "I've been wondering what a SEP soldier looked like for a while now. I suspect I'm about to learn a lot."

"And here I thought it was just an excuse to get me naked," he says. It's supposed to be smooth, but he doesn't feel smooth with the cheap plastic of the sterile mattress sticking to his thighs. 

She laughs, lowering her eyes for a moment. And Jack laughs too, despite himself, and he runs a hand along the back of his neck. 

"What? Suddenly shy?" Angela teases.

"No," he says, and then: "A bit. You're, ahh... a really trusted colleague. That's a little different from normal."

She smiles, and it's cheeky. Her hands coast down his bare thighs as she sidles between his legs; by time her hands are on his knees, she's nearly flush with him. It's oddly erotic when her cotton lab coat brushes his skin, the stethoscope hanging out of her pocket cool and hard.

"Don't let me pressure you," she says. Her lips are so _pink_. 

Her fingers slip to her chest, and she unbuttons her blouse from the top to her waist, revealing a black lace bra and the modest swell of her breasts. He watches unblinking as she lifts each breast from its cup, rosy nipples perking under the air conditioning.

He feels like a teenager again. _Fuck._

Jack plucks himself up. He fucking walked in here with the expectation of stripping for her so she could see how good he looks, not to be a research plaything, and she knows that, too. So he gets it together, he hauls his confidence together. Chin up, Morrison. Shoulders straight. Cock stiffening.

"You know, doc," he says, a little gravely, even though his heart is pounding. "I know you're pretty thorough, but..."

He trails for her, leading. He wants to hear _her_ say it, just to make sure he's not fucking this up.

But she bursts out laughing.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says, between peals of laughter. "I know we talked about it, but I'm just not very good at this doctor kink... thing!"

Jack laughs, too. He can't help it. 

"You _are_ a doctor!" he says empathetically. 

"That's different!" she protests, but she's laughing still, both hands flying to her mouth, and he can't stand it so he takes her by the wrists and pulls her hands down and he plants a kiss on her, swift and fleeting and fun. "Jack, this is nonsense, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," he laughs. And then, because he's Jack fucking Morrison, he adds: "Forget that. Come here."

She just laughs and leans in and sinks into his arms –– and a proper kiss.


	7. Freefall

.

 

 

Widowmaker's rifle whistles, and the results shriek out an instant later: Mercy, tumbling through the air, down a wing. Great beams of yellow light fan out on one side, the other flinging the spine of a broken wing. Reaper feels the collective gasp, the unanimous dread.

The fall will kill her.

Anger surges in him and as he hurls himself from the edge of the building, he is at once black, billowing smoke. His vision is hazy like this, but his aim is true: he becomes solid again mid-air, just in time to hook his arms around her, and then they plummet together.

Her eyes are wide, searching wildly.

He shadow-steps — more like shadow-hurls, with the momentum they're sharing.

They land fifty feet north, hard enough to hurt, tumbling, rolling over each other until her remaining wing catches her against the ground. He crushes her with his weight, and she scrambles to get out from under him anyway — she's reaching, reaching— he pins her forearm when her fingertips are just inches from her blaster. She strains against him anyway.

The indignity of it hurts more than the impact did.

He knocks the blaster away.

"I save your life," he rasps, "and the first thing you think about is shooting me?"

She stills very suddenly. She's breathing heavily, _panting_ , evidently in a great deal of pain while waiting for her enhancements to kick in. Her eyes are very wide — her gaze bores through his skull.

She manages: "You...?"

Yes. _Him._ Her enemy. 

"Me," he says, and he lets her up. She drags herself out from under him, trailing a miserably broken wing. It overbalances her, makes it difficult for her to get up again. His muscles ache from the quick cellular cycling needed to pull something like that off, but he stands tall over her anyway. It makes him feel powerful. 

"And if someone's going to kill you," he utters, "it had better be _me_."

He lines up a shotgun.

That's when the spray of pulse munition finds his back, hot speckles that he feels through his body armor. He turns sharp, stinging.

"Back away from her," Soldier barks.

Not without a fight.

 


	8. Movie Night

.

 

Angela loves her apartment. It has an open living room and a little kitchen, and a cozy bedroom. It is decorated at all times of the year, even if she is always at the HQ or sleeping or traveling the world. She likes the familiarity of it, the warmth of a place for one but with space for guests. 

Gabe and Jack seem happy here, too. Especially right now, with some wine in them –– two bottles Jack had picked up at the dollar store, which he also declares better than any wine he's ever had in America. Despite everything wrong with that, Angela doesn't doubt it. So with glasses of red and lazy voices, they relax. They talk. They put on an old movie they've all seen before and numb out their brains.

It feels particularly necessary after three days in Toronto dealing with a minor emergency situation –– or at least what constitutes a _minor_ emergency by _Overwatch's_ need for involvement.

Angela is nestled on one side of Gabe, and Jack is on the other. Jack's head is on Gabe's thigh, and so he monopolizes much of couch when he stretches out. Gabe runs a fingertip gently along Jack's hairline, and then around the shell of Jack's ear. They're sweet together, when they're not bickering.

And then:

"What the hell are those?" Jack asks, suddenly. He's gesturing at Gabriel's feet, where his ankles are crossed on the coffee table. Angela squints through the dimness of the room, waiting for the movie scene to brighten and cast more light. When it does, she makes it out: his socks have a silly little novelty print of lime green and grey crowns, and big woven text: _DON'T MESS WITH THE KING_.

He comments, dully: "They were a gift."

"From who?"

"None of your business," Gabe replies. Angela feels it rumble through him to her, a thrum deep in his chest.  She could doze off to that, she thinks.

"They're socks, Gabriel," Jack says. "Not state secrets."

"I bet they're from his mother," Angela suggests, closing her eyes.

"Is _that_ what she sends you in those big care packages?" Jack asks, lifting his head, "Socks?"

"Shut up," Gabriel says, firmly, and he puts a big palm on the side of Jack's head and forces it back down at rest against his thigh. 

"A sensitive spot," Angela murmurs, warmly, running a hand up his belly. She kisses Gabe's bare skin where the neck of his t-shirt falls, and then she looks up at him. Gabriel looks down at her, unimpressed, with a little curl to the corner of his mouth.

" _No,_ you're just talking over my favourite scene in this movie," he says. "Now watch."

But Jack and Angela, they know.


	9. Choked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaper and Mercy PWP; breath play, medical content, power play, dirty talk, whatever.

.

 

His gauntleted hand fits around her throat, the leather creaking as he closes his fingers. His thumb claw digs in around her windpipe. Her pulse throbs, even through his gloves. 

"You're sick for liking this," Reaper tells her, hissing. 

"I-Ironic," she chokes out.

It is, but for that he presses her down, thrusts into her so hard she slides a few inches back on the table. Mercy breathes in sharp, wheezing, and only because he _lets_ her. He fucks that breath right back out of her. God, she's so fucking _wet._

"You know the reason _I'm_ fucking you?" he asks. "Because no one else will."

She has one hand on his wrist, her grip almost desperate. It'd be hard to let her go if he wanted to. Her other hand is between them, on her own clit.

"Because no matter how pretty you make yourself," he continues, "no matter how perfect you are, you're just an abomination, like I am. You're _artificial_."

Mercy digs her heels into him suddenly, arching best she can between him and the table. He leans over her hard, pinning her down best he can with his body weight. It takes strain to choke her at the same time, but god, if Reaper doesn't endure for the sake of it.

She stills under him.

"And the reason no one wants you is because they know exactly _what_ you are –– a sick person who toys with others." He whispers: "Someday, _Angela_ , you're going to die alone."

There are tears sparking in the corners of her eyes. He almost feels good about it –– almost. There's a flickering part of him that recoils with disgust. This is what he is, too.

But she's trembling, sucking in lungfuls when he lets her, bracing against him when he doesn't. He feels her clamp around him, so tight it's difficult to withdraw and still push back in, but each stroke is easier than the last. Her hands on his wrist is bracing, pulling him in. 

She wants this, and if she wants him, then she's as bad as he is.

He moves his hand from her throat to her breast. She moans when he kneads her pale flesh, cold metal claws making little indents, but maybe it's just for finally having air.

"Your dirty talk... used to be more fun," she gasps out, her voice a little raw, but it'll heal up quick.

"Don't think this is something it isn't," Reaper says. It's a mouthful, but she seems to get it. She lifts her chin a little, eyes half-lidded as she pants under him. Her thighs flex around him.

"I don't," she says. "I know exactly what this is."

"Tell me, then," he growls. "What is it?"

"You don't –– _oh_ , you don't hate me nearly as much as you –– uhh! –– claim to," she says, voice high and breathy. He fucks her a little slower at that, too intent on listening –– she gets a hand to his collar and she drags him in, so he bends over her again. Her wrists curl in, and she seems to yank him further into her with every thrust. 

"You just need to justify hating me to yourself," she says. God, there's that little mischief in her voice, the slightest _suggestion_. "You overcompensate. You can't just want me –– you have to hate wanting me."

"Quiet," Reaper hisses. He wants his hand back on her throat but bent like this he needs one to steady himself and the other is still on her breast.

"You can't just loathe me –– you have to want to _punish_ me," Mercy says, and she makes this noise, this keening, pleasant little _noise_ , hummed right in his face. He hates how she can say these miserable things, these miserable untrue things, while moaning, while taking his cock––

When he buries himself fully in her, she locks him in with surprising strength, and she digs her heels into him to prevent him from drawing back. She lays her arms around his neck and curves herself to him. 

She grips him and she says: "You can't like anything about yourself, so you have to hate me for making you what you are."

"You'll––"

"Don't you?" she interjects.

Reaper feels something stick in his neck, something like a black fly –– harmless but sharp, a sting. But he also feels his body slacken, and were it not for her thighs around him, his weakened knees would bring him to the floor.

"What did you..." He slaps at his neck, and she drops a single-use injector aside. He doesn't know what it is, but he can guess.

She writhes against him.

"Relax, Gabriel," she says, softer, silkier. "Relax."

Mercy pushes him to the floor. She straddles his hips, her shirt caught bunched up over her hip, her lab coat askew on her shoulders. She guides him into her again, just as smooth, and she glides in to the hilt effortlessly, a silent moan popping off her lips as she goes. It is strange; it's been so long since he felt human that it just ends up feeling like weakness, and yet he can't care, buried in her silkiness. Reaper feels his breath quicken, deepen. He grasps for her, even while inside of her, for something to keep himself up with.

Reaper feels his limbs entirely slackened, save for his rock-hard cock.

"Oh, baby," he hisses, "you're _sick._ "

Mercy rides him slow but firm, grinding her hips in long, deep circles. His hands fumble –– it's a lot to even grip her thighs, grasp for her, grope her. Mercy just rides him, oblivious to his efforts. _Using_ him. 

And god, if he isn't harder for it.


	10. Microscope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Overwatch collapses, Gabriel pretends nothing has changed, and Angela plays along. They both know better.

.

 

"Long time no see," she says, without even looking up from her microscope. She's watching something intently –– probably cells improving each other, if not cannibalizing each other. There's a smile on her face. Maybe it's a breakthrough.

"Back to back missions," he says. It's really only been two weeks.

She looks up at him. Her eyes are very blue.

"Did it go well?" she asks.

A dangerous question, perhaps. Nothing has been going well lately, and Gabriel is sure that if Angela spritzed him down with luminol, she'd still find evidence of it in the cracks of his pores, the beds of his nails, the corners of his mouth. She doesn't seem to think about it much, though. Jack's filled her head with too many fairytales. She thinks Overwatch is going to dig its way out of this rut, like the public will ever really forget.

"Hmm," he murmurs. He moves in behind her, so close that he could step on her heels. She stiffens, just slightly, as his gloved palms glide up her waist. He says, low on his breath, right by her ear: "Did you miss me?"

"Gabriel," she says. Her shoulders shiver, and she turns to look at him. "I always miss you."

He has to resist the urge to say _oh, please._ She doesn't miss him. In fact, she probably feels relieved when he's gone; there's far less tension when Gabriel is out of the way, leaving the rest of Overwatch unfettered by his  _attitude_  and his _demands_ and his _ever-dwindling_ patience. That's fine, too; if she wants to sink with them, she can't say he didn't warn her, didn't tell her that they were making mistakes. She can drown with Jack Morrison.

But even now, Angela relaxes against him as her attention drifts back to her work. She lets him touch her, even as she takes one last look through the microscope lens. He _could_ be the world's neediest boyfriend, cloying behind a woman at her work, but he's not her boyfriend. Angela doesn't keep partners.

(He remembers the first time she let him look at what she was doing, on a visit to her temporary lab in Stuttgart; he'd seen spidery legs while looking and she'd laughed and told him they were his own eyelashes. That was a long time ago.)

"I'm almost finished, here," she says, glancing up at him. "Do you want to wait?"

She runs a gloved hand down his sleeve, the latex undoubtedly collecting tiny little fibers, and microscopic evidence of where Blackwatch has been. That's okay. She won't check.

"I don't really feel like it," he says. He gropes her, almost pointedly, one firm hand digging into her breast and the other coasting down her belly. She's wearing a fitted skirt in some sort of leatherette, and it scrunches under his fist in a satisfying way. He wishes he could scare her, spook her a little, get up in her space and feel her up and chuckle in her ear, but Angela just doesn't scare. She gasps a little, laughs a little, but she doesn't scare. She doesn't know enough about what he does.

Angela breathes in deeply, under his grip, and she says: "You're lucky nanotechnology doesn't get contaminated easily."

"You sure?" he replies. "We could test it. See how much it takes."

He presses his cock against her ass, and she looks at him plainly; there's a little tug of amusement on her mouth, as if she finds this behavior quaint. In fact, she turns a bit in his arms and kisses his jaw, swift and friendly. _Dismissive._ It makes his pulse twitch. This is why he still chases after her, even long after they've all fallen apart: her patience feels good. It makes him feel like maybe he still has friends in Overwatch, if she's still willing to love him in these little ways, no matter what Jack says to her.

"Why don't we go up to the apartments?" she asks. "You still have a room here, don't you?"

He does, untouched, near-abandoned, but she doesn't wait for an answer. She pulls herself from his grip to switch off her microscope, she starts walking away with a reached out behind her, though, as if he would take it to follow. He trails behind her instead, boots slow and heavy on the tile, following the gentle fan of her pristine white lab coat. He wants to pull her back, bend her over the counter instead of going to their room. 

Walking by other members of Overwatch in the halls.

Walking by people who hate him, who looks at him and think _thank god for Jack Morrison_. And _he's the reason Overwatch is in crisis._ Not their saint, no, never, not possible. Gabriel Reyes, Blackwatch. Guilty! Twisted! Bloodbaths! But what the fuck do they know? They're idiots, and he never liked them anyway.

"Why not here?" he says. "I can fuck you while you look into your microscope."

Her smile twitches.

"Come now," she says, sensibly. "There are reference cameras in here."

"Afraid of something?" he says, and then, spilling frustration: "Afraid of Overwatch knowing you fuck with its black sleep?"

If the accusation bothers her, she doesn't show it; her smile is magnanimous. 

"We could meet for coffee in the busiest square in Dorado, or take a stroll through Bremen for lunch, or visit the Louvre during tourist season," she says. "In fact, I would not mind if we kissed in the lobby of the headquarters, even if it would upset the others. But _you_ choose the time and place, and this is what you choose, time and time again. _Sneaking around._ "

"That's ridiculous," he tells her. "You wouldn't be _seen_ with me."

She raises her chin.

"No? Because you were always the one that hid us, Gabriel," she says.

_Us._ That includes Jack, and he knows it. He knows she means it.

"Forget it," he says, and he pushes past her.

Forget it.


	11. Skiing

.

 

"My, who is this?" Angela asks, warmly, as she walks into the lounge.

Jack and Gabe both turn to look at her, as does the little girl perched in Gabe's arms.

"Fareeha," the girl says, before either man can speak for her. She swings her legs a little as she speaks, smiling; her boots leave a dusty streak on Gabe's pants.

"Fareeha," Angela repeats. Still a beautiful name. "You're Ana's daughter."

Fareeha nods.

She couldn't be a day over eight or nine –– certainly old enough to not be lifted and carried about –– but she looks perfectly at home against Gabe's broad hip, an arm around his thick neck. Her brown eyes are warm and wide. Still, she nudges him in the ribs and Gabriel sets her down, and as he does he reaches to pat her on the top of the head, which Fareeha deftly dodges. (Old enough to want to look more mature than her age, certainly.) It's probably the most familial thing Angela has ever seen him do, anyway. She's certainly never seen him interact with children.

Fareeha looks for her hand, and so Angela extends it. Angela's slim fingers swallow up the girl's little hand easily, but Fareeha has a real military handshake, even this young. Firm. Resolute. 

"Well," Angela says, "I'm Angela Ziegler. I've heard a lot about you."

"I've heard of you," Fareeha says, but she looks up to Jack for confirmation. "The doctor?"

"A scientist, technically," Jack says. "You can call her Doc or Angela. Right?"

Jack flicks his gaze to her. Angela nods and smiles. Fareeha nods, too. She's taller than average, Angela guesses, even though Jack and Gabriel make poor yardsticks; she only stands as tall as their ribs, anyway. Maybe a little slight for her age, but given her mother's stature, those skinny arms will likely fill out in time.

"Her dad's got an overseas contract that overlapped with winter break," Jack says. "Easier for her to come here, plus an added bonus of extra time with her mom."

Ah, yes. Ana spends much of her daughter's school year stationed at various Watchpoints around the world, and then is gone back to Egypt for the summers, at least whenever time permits –– a life built around the Canadian elementary school system. Angela's own childhood had often been like that, her mother and father on various contracts and relief missions. She had often joined her parents on the simpler trips, ducking in and out of medical tents and hospitals alike. It had been a joyous thing as a child, and a useful footnote in her medical school applications as an adult. It had been an early path to her medical career.

Perhaps Fareeha will be Overwatch, too, in fifteen years or so. A sniper like her mother, stretched flat on her belly, round cheek plush against the rest piece.

Angela doesn't much like that mental image.

"I've only ever visited here in the summer," Fareeha says.

"Have you ever spent the holidays outside of Vancouver?" Angela asks.

"No," Fareeha says. "Well, not since I was a baby." 

"Then maybe you'll be seeing proper snow for the first time," Angela says. "There's lot of rain in Vancouver, isn't there?"

Fareeha nods. She asks: "Do you ski?"

Angela laughs.

"Do I ski?" she repeats. She looks down at Fareeha with a wide smile. "When I was your age, we'd sing a song with the refrain ' _Alles fahrt Schii, Schii fahrt die hanzi Nation!_ ' –– everyone in our nation is skiing!"

Fareeha laughs, but then she looks up at Gabriel. She hooks a finger at him until he stoops to her level. Angela watches curiously as Fareeha cups a hand around his ear and whispers something. Gabe straightens up and gently waves her off. 

"No, you ask her yourself," he says. "You're not _shy,_ kid."

Fareeha gives him a plaintive look, as if he might have once been swayed by a little girl with big brown eyes, but he shakes his head at her, firm. And so, with a wonderful bit of childish rebound, Fareeha looks up at Angela with a cautious smile.

"I've never been skiing," she admits. "Nobody will take me."

Angela looks at Jack and Gabe, who both seem as though they have been fending off this request for a lifetime. 

"I'm from LA," Gabriel says, before anyone can say anything. Angela could call it defensive, or say that there are absolutely ski hills in California, but it doesn't matter. She _knows_ he doesn't ski. She can't even imagine it. And Jack –– Jack shrugs off her look with an easy roll of his shoulders. Salt-of-the-earth Indiana guy, too busy on the farm.

"Parents never took me. I wouldn't mind trying, though."

"Wouldn't that be a funny trip," Angela says. "I suppose with your mother's permission, I could take all three of you."

Gabe laughs, turning every head in their motley party. He shakes his head. 

"You're not getting me on skis," he says.

"Well, I'm not whisking off this girl alone when I've only just met her," Angela says.

"If I go, _you've_ got to go," Jack says to Gabe.

"I _don't_ think so," Gabe says.

Angela watches Jack clasp his hands together, wring his fingers as if preparing for a brawl, all with a grin.

"So you're going to deny our best girl a chance to ski with a bonafide Swisswoman?" Jack asks.

Gabe gives him a long, hard look, and then he looks down to Fareeha's expectant look –– a crucial tactical error. He breathes in deeply, and then he exhales, exhausted already.

"Twist my arm, why don't you," Gabe tells Fareeha.

The girl just laughs and laughs.


	12. Who Thinks The Agents Of Overwatch Are Fucking?

**Who thinks the Agents of Overwatch are fucking?**

When this headline assaults him, Jack is standing in line at a grocery store, idly scanning through the news on his phone. He scrolls past it on instinct, and then impulse has him scrolling back up, a brief flick of the eye that brings it right back onto the screen. There it is again, bold face:

**Who thinks the Agents of Overwatch are fucking?**

Thursday, 6:40 PM. Filed to: SEX.

Jack looks at the line ahead of him. It's three deep, and the fellow at the front of the line is taking his sweet time arguing over the staleness of some bread and whether it warranted a discount or not.

Well, he got past the headline. He's here. He might as well read it and kill time waiting in one go.

_Here’s a thought experiment for you: Imagine you’re an agent of Overwatch, unless you are actually an agent of Overwatch. In that case, you don't really need to imagine anything at all. Maybe you can just answer this question. Who are you fucking?_

Good question, Jack thinks.

It's a long article, cheeky and rambling and more than a little prying. There are pictures and screencaptures of social media conversations, all juxtaposed with colourful reaction text. The text piles up the theories, the reasoning, the logic behind the question: who thinks they're fucking? Who are they fucking? Which ones are fucking? Wouldn't you be fucking, if you were a member of a team of beautiful, worldly, athletic, remarkable people like the agents of Overwatch? Who wouldn't?

There are 1766 comments when Jack scrolls in, and 12.2k likes. It's a popular topic, apparently. (Gabe is going to lose his shit. They're all never going to hear the end of it.)

The very first comment has a picture of him –– an old picture but a good one, a candid shot of him stripped to the waist in the summer heat, leaning against the side of an armored car. He's on his communicator in the photo, just as he is now, but he's laughing then. They'd won something.

The text reads: _Who is Overwatch fucking? God, I wish it were me._

He's not laughing now, though he feels his ego grow about ten times over. _Overwatch,_ like it's a single person, and not a collective. Is _he_ Overwatch?

So who does think the agents of Overwatch are fucking?

But well _,_ Jack doesn't just think.

He _knows._


	13. Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-coital tenderness, of a sort.

 

 

"You need a glass of water or anything?"

She's still catching her breath, sprawled across his bed, but she sits up on her hands at that –– like she can't just bask in the glow or however the cliché goes, lest she inconvenience him. Never one to ask for care, hmm? Her voice comes whispering and winded anyway: "Oh, I can get it."

"No, no," he says, and he keeps her down with a palm to the middle of her chest. Firm. "You catch your breath. I've got it."

His feet touch down on the floor.

"If you insist," she agrees. She doesn't just lay back; she twists to her side to curl up, heaving a short _laugh_. He's not sure if she could stand if she tried. He'd pushed her tonight, that's for sure.

Gabe walks to the kitchen and gets two glasses. As he jams them one after the other under the water dispenser in the fridge door, he catches his own breath –– there's a tiredness settling into his bones, heavy and satisfied. In that precious forty-five seconds standing in the kitchen, lit only by the blue glow of the appliances, Gabriel ponders just how stupid it is to fuck one's supporting officers, as he always does. And then, glasses full, he lets that thought drift away as fast as it came: his supporting officer needs tending to, and that's what a superior does.

He grabs a towel and moves to the kitchen sink. He runs the cloth under the tap a moment; the terrycloth resists at first, beads of water fumbling over its surface, but when it soaks, it soaks through. He wrings it out and drapes it over his shoulder so he can carry a glass in each hand.

By time he walks back to the bedroom, she's sitting upright again.

He wordlessly offers her a glass. She takes it with both hands and downs at least half of it like that, like she can't get enough. 

"Do you have a cloth?" she asks, when she finally comes up for air. She's tinged pink all over, pink and a glossy wet sheen. The vein in her forehead still bulges a little from being upside down for a while. Her hair is a mess.

He picks up the cloth from his shoulder. She reaches to take it from him, but he dodges her and brings it right to her face and drags it down the curve of her cheek. She sighs, leaning into its warmth.

"You're so sweet," she says, as he dips down to her clavicle. He doesn't feel sweet; just decent. A little raw.

"You're the sweet one, taking that," he says. "Jesus, girl."

As far as he's concerned, the _least_ he can do is wipe her down after.

"Not bad, hmm?" she hums, teasing, and she takes another deep swig of water. When her lips part from the glass, it's with a satisfied noise. He relishes it, wants to pry it from her lips again and again. She confides in him instead: "I still can't feel my toes."

It's Gabe's turn to chuckle. He swipes the cloth along the underside of her breasts, down her ribs, the soft spot of her belly. 

"Well, you can stay here in my bed as long as you like."

"Are you going to stay here with me?" she asks. Angela smiles, and she shifts how she's sitting, a little 'o' of discomfort flickering over her mouth as she eases her knees up. 

He hadn't really planned to. He thought he'd sit in an armchair in the living room and pound out a few mission reports before the clarity slipped from his grasp, but she brushes her bangs back out of her face and looks at him with _those_ eyes. Manipulative, he thinks. Orgasm _and_ cuddling. He sighs and dips the cloth between her thighs. She closes her eyes, exhales deeply. Soreness is part of the deal, though –– sorry, babe.

"Come, now," she says, and she kisses the rise of his cheek. "Rest up, doctor's orders."

"For a little bit," he relents. "I have work to do. Don't let me doze off."

"I can't make any promises," she says.

He takes her glass from her and sets it on the bedside table with a soft clink.

"Well, then, if I fall asleep, you're helping me make up for it tomorrow night," he warns. Keeping her from her late-night lab sessions two nights in a row –– that's the real threat, what he'll do to her in bed aside.

"That's fine," she says. 

Up for anything, as usual.

Angela kisses him again, on the corner of his mouth. It's slow and weighty and she lingers close, right in his face, even as he works the cloth between her legs.

"I never would have guessed when I first met you," he says. "I took you for one of those lights-off, gentle-lovemaking to easy listening types."

"Well, I wouldn't say no to that, either," she says, warmly. "But I'm glad to be full of surprises."

White robes and gentle smiles, that's what he'd thought of. He hadn't considered her job put her up to her elbows in blood and sinew. 

That was then, though.

Now, he lays down, and she curls up in the crook of his arm.


	14. Recognition

.

 

Maintenance is changing the portraits in the main lobby when Gabriel steps out of a particularly nasty afternoon meeting. Any other day, Gabe might have walked by with a certain snap to his step and his eyes straight ahead, but today, Gabe pauses. (After all, who ever really takes note of maintenance until they're doing a shit job?)

He looks up at the new frame and its new contents and he _sighs._

It's _that_ photo, blown up to be a dozen or so feet across.

"Why wasn't I consulted about this?"

The question pops out of his mouth before he even thinks about it. Angela is two steps behind him, and she looks at him confused before following his gaze up to that picture.

"Why would they?" she asks. "Doesn't the Director of Facilities handle the building?"

Gabe pauses and looks from her nonplussed expression back up to the photo.  

"I don't know what was wrong with the old one," she says. "But this looks nice, doesn't it?"

It's that infamous photo of Jack emerging from the war field, hand-in-hand with a skinny little boy. Jack looks off into the horizon, victorious, triumphant, coat aloft on the wind; he's unaware of the photographer, and yet the light hits his face and physique in such a way that he looks effortlessly heroic. The little boy looks up at him with wonder. The smoke clears around them, a perfect halo of air delivering them from the chaos of the war zone.

It's the image that has come to represent the rise of Overwatch after the end of the Omnic War, plastered on magazine covers and headlining every other article, and Gabriel is just sick of seeing it. It's smarmy and smug and the worst kind of dripping, self-absorbed reverence, especially plastered across a wall. Gabe looks at Angela; there's a polite, obligatory acquiescence to her expression the more she considers it.

"Maybe a little much at this scale," she admits, tapping a finger against her chin. "I wonder why they didn't go with a team photo? I wouldn't want to be up there, but..."

"I was thinking the exact same thing," Gabe says.

Not that he wants to be depicted larger-than-life in the main fucking lobby –– he's a soldier, not a fucking aspiring socialite  –– but if _anyone's_ going to be up there, it should be _him_ , the de facto _Commander_ of Overwatch. It rubs him the wrong way that it's Jack, who isn't even _second_ in command. 

Angela peers at him and touches a hand to his forearm.

"You're not upset about it, are you?" she asks.

" _No,_ " he sighs, and he ignores her raised eyebrow. "I just know Jack is going to be a dick about it. He's been doing a lot of press shit lately, and it's going to his head."

"Oh," Angela says. She sounds concerned for him anyway, and her hand drifts down to his elbow. "I can talk to him, if you'd like. He shouldn't be stepping on your toes like that."

"He's not," Gabe says. And then, with a snort: "I keep saying we should just replace him with one of those game show girls if he's going to act like that, but..."

Angela just smiles, a little terse. She looks up to the photograph one last time. He looks at her and thinks: _Fuck. She's going to bring it up to him anyway._ He shouldn't have mentioned it. It doesn't really matter, anyway. Who cares if Jack is steadily eclipsing him in public recognition? It's not his damn job to be publicly recognizable. If anything, that'll just hurt his ability to do his job.

"How about we get lunch, then?" she says. Her touch is sweet, roving. "Just you and me?"

"Fine," he says, feeling like she's trying to placate him. It rubs a little. It pries a smile out of him anyway.


	15. More Than This

 

It takes courage.

"What if we were together?" she asks. "For something lasting. Something more than this."

Gabriel sighs. For a moment he's silent, scrubbing at his beard, looking anywhere but at her. The longer it drags on, the less she wants an answer.

"I don't know, Angela," he says, finally. "I don't know."

"Has it ever even crossed your mind before?" she asks.

"Sure," he says. "Sometimes I think about what it'd be like to go home to you, and fill you up with my babies and see you get old. Who wouldn't? Look at you."

He's slouched deep into his seat, shoulders rigid, and for once she has no desire to crawl up into his space and kiss his temple and coax affection out of him. Flattery doesn't get him anywhere this time. She just frowns and folds her hands together for want of something else to do with them. 

"That's a lot of me in that fantasy," she says, finally. "Not a whole lot of you."

Gabriel sighs, long and hard.

"Yeah, _well_ ," he says. "I'm not any other kind of man. You know that."

He sells himself short all the time, but there's no luck in telling him that. She's not sure why she feels sad. She has always been married to her work, first and foremost, but to be swept away by some tall-dark-handsome soldier might have been the only romantic possibility in her life. That thought sails away in favour of a worse one: what kind of man does he think he is? 

"Let's forget this," she says.

"Sure," he says. "Forget it."

Funny thing is, she knows he'll end up the one who can't.


	16. The Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little conversation and an unexpected discovery in Gabriel's closet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a prompt from Meg, plus those neato theories floating around that Gabriel was Reaper well before the accident.

.

 

"We should get back to work," she tells him, hopping from his bed and retrieving her underwear from the sheets. She tugs it on with her eyes on him. "What are you doing after the briefing tonight?"

"Flying out," he says, making no effort to get up, still leaning against the headboard. His expression is mixed, but he looks unamused by her rushing around, at the very least. "Mission in the Outback."

"Really?" Angela says, tentatively, her teeth ghosting over her lower lip. "It's still irradiated. They have appropriate gear for you, don't they?"

"They do, Doc," he confirms. "Don't need to worry."

She smiles and pulls up her pleather pencil skirt and zippers it at the hip. 

"I wouldn't dream of it," she says. "You keep yourself very safe in the field. That being said, I wasn't aware of any Overwatch causes in the Outback."

Gabriel smiles a touch, just the corner of his mouth curling.

"Classified," he says.

"Of course," she says. His wheelhouse, the Blackwatch. 

Her attention drifts to her blouse, which she picks up from the floor with a frown. It's wrinkled, and she wrinkles her nose at it in turn.

"Do you have an iron?" she asks.

"Closet," he says, gesturing, but his attention dips down to his communicator.

She wanders around the corner of his room to the large front closets, and she slides both doors open. She's been in his room many times over the past year, and through this closet a few times to grab a t-shirt or bag or shoes, but she's never seen any iron. The bracket on the wall where it would normally sit is empty, evidently to make space for an extra shelving unit. On the balls of her feet she inventories the higher shelves: gym bag, old shoe boxes, a few misshapen zippered organizers, a basketball crammed into a tight space.

"Very top shelf on the left," he calls.

She steps up on the lowest shelf for six inches of extra height and gropes around. Her hand closes around a thick handle, and she drops down with it in-hand.

When she looks down at what she's grabbed, though, she pauses.

"What is this?" she asks.

Gabriel is behind her in an instant. He appraises the skull mask in her hand with a shrug.

"It's part of an old Halloween costume," he says.

She looks down at it. The mask is lightweight, but it's not plastic — it feels just like the compound their flex breastplates are made of, and it's got a sophisticated foam padding liner; she can feel the gel substrate inside to absorb heavy impact. When she looks up at him, he's watching her with a mildly puzzled look.

"What's up?" he asks.

It strikes her that he's lied to her, but he's so casual that she wouldn't have guessed if she wasn't well-versed in tactical protective gear construction.

"Fancy, for Halloween," she says.

He shrugs and reaches above her to grab the iron. His bare chest brushes the back of her as he does, and he gives her a squeeze after he hands the iron to her.

"It started life as a paintball mask," he supplies.

"I see," she says. She kisses him on the jaw and waltzes away with a smile, the iron in hand. 

But it's going to stick with her.


End file.
